Wounded warrior Johnny ‘Joey’ Jones: Dogs are being shamefully abused in VA labs. This must stop

That’s why I am proud to join the majority of my fellow veterans and other Americans who support Congress’s bipartisan work to defund painful and inefficient dog experiments at the VA. This legislation is truly a light among the gloomy partisan clouds surrounding D.C. these days.

With all of D.C.’s political gridlock, my dear friend and fellow double amputee and bomb technician Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla., Rep. Dave Brat, R-Va., and other House members deserve applause for unanimously passing legislation this summer to prohibit taxpayer funding for questionable VA research that causes dogs significant pain and distress.

To be absolutely clear—I am not opposed to all animal research. Congress isn’t either.

We’re just trying to prevent Americans from being forced to pay for the worst, needless dog abuses in VA laboratories.... The VA is apparently the only federal agency doing this category of extreme tests on dogs. The PUPPERS Act doesn’t apply to any other species, doesn’t affect non-painful dog research and has an exemption for anything related to training service dogs and working dogs.

As one retired Naval Medical Corps Rear Admiral writes, dog testing is “slow, expensive and very rarely applies to humans” which “translates into billions of wasted tax dollars each year.” Spinal cord injury—one of the flags VA is waving to defend its dog abuse—is one of countless areas where decades of dog testing has failed to produce an effective treatment or cure.

oh, please read the whole article. As the mom of a former Marine I know about their training. I took a class online with an online lab where we shocked rats for stress research. Why these kinds of repeated already researched tests aren’t ALL online I will never know unless it is to desensitize the students going into research.

However, medical training is different.

As for research...so much outside work is going on in neuroscience that the VA should only do research on its biggest problems, especially suicide prevention. Hmmm. how cost effective is that for the government death panels?///sssss

“Researchers activate repair program for nerve fibers”
Oct 7, 2016

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161007084632.htm

I have a friend who is a PhD biomedical engineer. This is what he told me:

I disagree with these guys completely. These guys are teaming with PETA and the Humane Society of the USA.

It used to be that dogs that were used in labs were dogs that were going to be destroyed by the dog pound. However, the Humane society put an end to that. It is much better to destroy the dogs at the pound for no reason, than to use them to improve our lives in research. The cost of the dogs went from $50 when I started grad school to over $1000 by the time I left (and the cost has gotten to be MUCH higher since then). By the end of grad school, the only dogs that could be used for research were ones that were raised specifically for research. The dogs we originally used were pretty gnarly, and it was obvious why they were going to be destroyed. When we had to get them from breeders, we were getting BEAUTIFUL hounds from a breeder that was raising them for hunting. If they were gun shy or not good hunters, he started selling them to labs. By the time I was graduating, the good ole boy that was the breeder told me he was really having an ethical dilemma. If a dog could hunt, he would get about $250 for the dog, but if it was rejected, he was getting close to a $1000... All driven by the humane society.

There are so many rules about using dogs for research, that they feel little or no pain during any procedure. And only experiments that can actually help humans significantly, and can only be done with dogs, are allowed to be done. The dogs have a much better outlook for life than one of the "breeders" at the typical puppy mill for sure!

I wonder if the VA is outside the box of rules for what can be done to the animals they use? They are not under any state gov’t that has its own laws, eh? People are fined for abandoning their dogs or when it gets loose but the military hasn’t had a good record with their dogs and they can get around that with contractors.

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